The common exploitation and oppression that white and Third World workers face, especially in the large industrial plants, forms the material basis for building their unity in struggle against monopoly capitalism. But simply the fact that white and Third World workers are employed in the same factory (or even on the same assembly line) does not wipe out the inequality between them, or automatically establish a high level of unity. In fact, Third World workers are concentrated, in caste-like oppression, in the dirtiest, most dangerous, lowest-paying jobs, with the least seniority.
Taking the Black percentage of the total labor force as a yardstick, Black people are under-represented in white collar and middle class categories (professional and technical workers, clerical and sales, craftsmen and foreman and managers, officials and proprietors). They make up far more than their share of production workers, farm and non-farm laborers, service workers and of course, private household workers (almost half of whom are Black).
For women, the categories line up differently, but the general pattern is unmistakably the same: Black people are concentrated in the lower-paying categories. Three out of ten Black women are employed in professional, managerial, technical and sales and clerical jobs (the overwhelming majority in the last two categories); 6 out of 10 white women are in these slots–with a much higher percentage on the professional, managerial and technical levels. Again, the percentage in blue-collar production work is more equal (17% Black women, 16% white women). And, finally, over half the Black women in the labor force are in service and farm and non-farm labor categories (with a large part in domestic work), while only 20% of the white women are.
This pattern has held true over the past ten years, despite the sharp increase in Black professionals and technical workers and a noticeable decline in Black household workers. In response to the struggle of the Black people, the bourgeoisie has been forced to open up a few slots in the middle classes for Black people, and certainly has made every effort to give the impression that the position of Black people is improving. But token Black officials and managers and Black faces on T.V. commercials are only a smokescreen to hide the fact that, for the great majority of Black people, working like a mule for the Man, in his factory or his home (if you can work at all) is the stark reality.
The saying, “Last hired and first fired” is still completely accurate to describe the situation of Black workers. As we noted earlier, over the past 20 years, the rate of Black unemployment has generally run twice as high as that of whites. In 1950, the Black unemployment rate was officially listed at 9.0%, while the white rate was 4.9%. In 1970, the rates were Black 8.2%, white 4.5%. Actually, in the year 1969-70, the official white unemployment rate increased by a bigger percent than the Black rate. This is because many more Black people, who are also more heavily victimized by long-term unemployment, were out of work long enough to drop off the list of officially registered unemployed.
This raises the point that the official unemployment rate considerably understates the amount of unemployment, especially among the Black and Third World people. (These unemployment figures are for “Black and other minorities.”) For Black teen-agers (16-19) the official unemployment rate is permanently at depression levels. In 1960, one-fourth of the Black teen-agers were unemployed; by 1970, the number had jumped to 30%. Once again, the figures for white teen-agers, while very high, were only half those of the Black rate-13.4% in 1960, 13.5% in 1970 (no real change from 1960). And, in many areas of Black concentration, the overall Black unemployment rate is ahead)’ well above the highest unemployment for the Depression. The mayor of Gary, Indiana, for example, recently estimated that the unemployment rate in that majority-Black city, a major steel-producing center, is actually over 40%.
For Black women, the unemployment rate is even higher–9.3%, compared to 5.4% for white women. And the biggest difference (outside of farm labor) is in clerical and sales jobs. Once again, the least area of difference between Black and white unemployment rates–for both men and women–is factory workers and non-farm laborers.
But these unemployment figures do not tell the full story of the depressed condition of Black labor. In 1959, only half of the Black male workers held down full-time, five days a week jobs: two-thirds of the white male workers did. By 1969 the situation had changed somewhat, but the inequality in this one area was far from eliminated. In that year, 6 out of 10 Black men worked a full week all year round, while 7 out of 10 white men did. For Black women the last ten years have seen slightly more relative improvement in full-time work. In 1959, 27% of Black women workers had full-time jobs, as compared to 37% of white women. In 1969 the figures were Black women 39%, white women 41%. But, once again, this doesn’t tell the full story.
The percentage of Black women who are heads of families is three times that of white women–another result of the special oppression of Black people. And many Black women are domestic workers, earning at or below the minimum wage. The growing numbers of Black women joining the ranks of the revolution reflects this condition, and echoes the sentiments of the unnamed Black slave in Virginia in 1835, who was overheard to say that “she wished to God it (slavery) was all over and done with; that she was tired of waiting on the white folks” (Cited by Herbert Aptheker in Negro Slave Revolts p. 52.)
Today, the position of Black workers–especially with the growing economic crisis and massive lay-offs–is much less secure than the already insecure position of white workers. This is especially true of Black factory workers. Almost 30% of the factory jobs now held by Black workers were won only in the last ten years–through the mass struggle of the Black people. And at every age level the percentage of Black people presently out of the work force because of disability is greater than the percentage of whites. This reflects the fact that Black workers not only face greater unemployment, but when they do get jobs, they are forced to work in the most dangerous areas.
Even in the industries where Black workers are most concentrated, they are concentrated in the low-paying jobs. In the 9 industries with a large proportion of Black workers, Black people make up 18% of the total work force. But they hold only 7% of the higher-paid jobs within these industries, and 25% of the lower-paid jobs. In these same industries, for companies employing more than 100 workers, 12% of the Black workers are in the high-paying categories, 22% in the middle-paying categories, and 66% in the low-paying categories.
In the industries with the higher pay scales, Black people are also locked into the lower-paying jobs. For the nine industries with the highest wages, Black workers make up just over 8% of the total work force, but, out of these 750,000 Black workers, only 30,000 (4%) are in the higher-pay categories, while one-fourth of the total, or 190,000, are in the lower categories. In the transportation equipment industry (mainly auto)–where the average hourly wage was $3.90 in 1969–Black workers were 10% of the total work force; but they were 21% of the lower-pay workers, and only 1% of the higher-pay workers. The same pattern holds for steel, air transportation, chemicals, electrical machinery, and the other industries of this kind.
The reason for the systematic concentration of Black workers in the worst jobs is not that Black workers are not unionized. In fact, the percentage of Black workers in unions–for both men and women–is higher than the percentage of white workers: Black men, 35% in unions, white men 30%; Black women 14%, white women, less than 13%. The problem is that the trade unions are controlled from the top by men who draw huge salaries, invest union funds as private capital (and sometimes become monopoly capitalists in their own right). They are loyal to the interests of the capitalist class, not the working class.
As an integral part of this, they guarantee that the system of white supremacy is maintained as a crucial prop of monopoly capitalism. Just one reflection of this is the fact that, despite the large numbers of Black rank-and-file members in most industrial unions, the leadership of these unions–especially at the level of the International–has only a few token Blacks. And many craft unions continue their tradition of barring Black people from membership–except in token numbers–to say nothing of leadership. The struggle to wrest control of the trade unions from these traitors cannot be separated from the fight to overcome white supremacy within the unions as well as within industry. The organization of Black workers and Third World workers to wage this fight does not disrupt the workers’ movement, but inspires and propels it forward.
This fight must be carried out not only in unionized industry, but throughout society. For example, in federal government employment–which is supposedly covered by all kinds of anti-discrimination acts–Black workers were 15% of the total in 1970; but they held only 3% of the higher-grade jobs covered under the Federal Classification Act, 4% of the higher-grade jobs in the Postal Field Service, and less than 10% of the blue-collar jobs paying over $8,000.
For the overall society, the median income of Black people is around 60% of the white median income. This is a significant increase over the period before World War II (in 1939, the figure was only 41%), but there has been no increase at all over the past 20 years (in 1953 the Black median income was 59% of white median income). Government statistics for 1969 indicate that less than one-fourth of the families of “Negro and other races” had yearly incomes over $10,000, while about half of the white families did (“white” includes Mexican-Americans in this government survey). On the other end of the scale, 20% of “Negro and other races” families had incomes under $3,000, as compared to 8% of the white families.
For the year 1970, almost one-third of the Black (and “other”) people lived below the official government “low income” standard $3968 yearly income for a family of four in the city, $150 less for rural families); one-tenth of the white people lived in official poverty.
Black people are approximately 10% of the total population, but 30% of the “below poverty” income population. About one-half of the Black families headed by women were below this line, compared to one-fourth of the white families headed by women (“remember that the percentage of Black families headed by women is three times as great). The rate of Black (and “other”) families that are forced onto the degradation of welfare is four times as great as the rate for whites.
Even the figures for nominal income, however, do not tell the full story. If, for example, a Black worker holds down the same job and draws the same paycheck as a white worker, the Black worker’s real income is likely to be as much as $1000 less. Landlords, merchants, loan companies and other parasites suck even more blood out of the Black community and other Third World communities, than white working class communities. Marx and Engels’ description of over 100 years ago applies even more graphically to Third World workers in the U.S. today:
No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer so far, at an end, and he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc. (Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto Peking Foreign Language Press Edition, Part One: “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” p. 40.)
Forced into ghetto slums, Black and other Third World people pay greatly inflated prices for food, medicine, housing and other basic necessities (to the extent that they can afford them at all), to say nothing of the so-called “luxuries.” Almost two-thirds of the white families in the U.S. own their homes (or, more accurately, are buying them, at very high interest, from the bank); only slightly more than two-fifths of the Black families “own” their homes. (Rent for the three-fifths who can’t afford the down-payment on a house is generally even more exorbitant than house payments.)
The infant mortality rate among Black people is almost twice that of whites: more than 35 Black babies (11 months or younger) out of every 1000 die each year; for whites the rate is just above 20 per 1000. Three times as many Black women die in childbirth as white women. For Black people as a whole, life expectancy is nearly 5 years less than for whites. Once again, this picture is externally the same for all Third World people; it is the representation in terms of human suffering of the caste-like position of the oppressed nationalities in the U.S. today.
And it cannot be separated from the long and barbaric history of national oppression that has characterized this country from the beginning. Among the Black people, the greatest concentration of low income families is found in the remaining rural population. While just over one-fourth of the Black people live in non-metropolitan areas, they account for nearly one-half of the Black families below the government’s “low income” level. The median yearly income of urban Black families (whether they were always urban dwellers or migrated from the rural areas) is about $5100; the median income of rural Black families is roughly half as high, $2800.
The pattern of rural Black poverty is even more pronounced in the south. Less than half of the Black people in the south still live in non-metropolitan areas, but nearly two-thirds of this group lives below the official poverty line. The differential between white and Black income is greatest in the south–urban and rural.
At the same time, the general income level, of both Black and “non-white,” is significantly lower in the south than anywhere else. Only 41% of the white families in the south have an income of more than $10,000 a year; 52% of the white families in the north and west are above $10,000. For Black people, the number is 14% above $10,000 in the south, and 33% in the north and west-the percent of Blacks in the north and west with yearly income over $10,000 is lower than the percent of whites in the south.
This is the concrete result of the domination of northern capital over the south, the maintenance of the south as a backward regional reserve for northern capital, and, as the cornerstone of this, the whole history of oppression of the Black nation, historically in the semi-feudal plantation south, and today throughout the country.
Another, more graphic way of looking at all this, is to compare the level of progress of Black people with whites in terms of “time lag.” For example, the rate of Black infant mortality in 1960 was the same as for whites in 1940 (a 20 year lag). For life expectancy, the lag is 28 years (Blacks had the same life expectancy in 1960 as whites in 1932). For income, the lag is 17 years. For school years completed, a lag of 20 years; for people 25 or over with some college, a lag of 20 years; and for people 20-24 with some college, Blacks lagged behind whites by 35 years. (Note: these figures are based on a study by a bourgeois economist, Rashi Fein, found in The American Negro, published by Beacon Press in 1965.)
The difference between White and Black educational levels is often seized on by the bourgeoisie, and bourgeois Blacks in league with the ruling class, in an attempt to foster illusions among the masses of Black people. The answer to all the problems is not revolutionary struggle, but bourgeois education, they preach.
If Black people “stay in school” and get an education, they can overcome discrimination and poverty. (“Without an education,” James Brown sings on, “you might as well be dead.”) Of course, mass struggle should be waged to break down barriers to education for Black people. But so long as political power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie, education cannot basically change the condition of Black, and other Third World people.
The simple fact is: the higher the level of education, the greater the difference between white and third world income.
White supremacy is built into the very foundation of bourgeois rule in the U.S., just as it is a cornerstone of imperialist rule throughout the world. And to reinforce the caste-like oppression of Third World people in the U.S., the ruling class concentrates its most vicious repressive apparatus in the Third World communities. So a large part of the Black liberation struggle–and the struggles of other Third World people–involves armed self-defense to hit back at the reactionary violence of the imperialist state with the revolutionary violence of the people.
In the final analysis, only the armed overthrow of monopoly capitalism can pave the way for the total elimination of the inequalities of capitalist society. And the overthrow of U.S. monopoly capitalism requires the linking up of the liberation struggles of the Third World people with the struggle of the entire working class, to eliminate class and national oppression. To achieve the unity of the proletariat to accomplish this historic task, white workers must come to understand–to hate–and to actively fight against any manifestation of national oppression, directed against any section of the Black people or other Third World people.